IN OUR days of drifting along the equator we had had our share
of the rains and sudden squalls that mark that section of the Pacific. And
on the morning of the 14th day we went into the doldrums. There was no breeze
at dawn nor did any arise during the day.

It was to be the worst period of the entire three
weeks for more reasons than thirst and hunger. About me was suffering such
as I never had seen before. Of the seven survivors I was the only one whose
lower body was not a mass of ulcers.

And now our clothing was disintegrating. The violent
sun rays were beginning to inflict serious burns. My socks had gone to pieces
and my shirt was splitting down the back, the sleeves, and the front. I had
left my shoes on the plane.

We had water, but the tiny daily dole in the bottom
of the flare shell only made us thirstier. Hunger had so weakened us that
the slightest effort was exhausting. We hadn't eaten in days, because the
salt air had rotted the fish lines, enabling the sharks to snap them and
carry off the hooks. Anyway, we had no bait. None of us could have stood
a flight physical; or a Boy Scout physical for that matter.

This was our situation when our rafts drifted into
the doldrums. It is not strange that all of us now had touches of delirium.
It was while going through one of those

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balmy periods that I had my fantastic meeting with Davy Jones and
his genial assistant, Jim Blood. Though this meeting was a product of delirium
it is one of my most vivid memories, oddly enough. But more of that
later.

In the doldrums there was no breath of wind to refresh
us. The ocean was glassy and glaring as far as we could see. Our eyes ached
in the merciless, blinding light.

One or two stanzas from Samuel Taylor Coleridge "The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner" came back to me then and I thought it fitted
our situation pretty well. I have reread it since, and except that we had
no mast or deck boards, there are four verses that might have been written
about our party. They tell it so graphically it puts me back in that raft
to read them. These are the stanzas:

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down 

'Twas sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break

The silence of the sea.

All in hot and copper sky,

The bloody sun, at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the moon.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water everywhere

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water everywhere

Nor any drop to drink

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It was during this period that Eddie Rickenbacker
worked hardest at keeping up morale. How he would light into those who sagged!
He kept the boys so furious at him they vowed they'd live to spite him. This
was especially true of two of the party.

Rickenbacker's keen ears seemed to catch every remark.
If it was a discouraging one, he would jump right down the throat of the
man who uttered it.

"What's that? What's that?" he would yell. "So YOU'RE
off again, are you? Why you blankety blank blank quitter! When we get out
of this you'd better crawl home to the women where you belong. How did you
even get into the Army anyway?"

One man who had provoked a particularly scathing call-down
from Rick asked later to shake hands. Rick told him:

"I'm glad to shake hands with any MAN. When you've
proved to me that you're one, I'll be tickled to death to put it
there."

In those four days, he slung some mighty powerful
plain and fancy cussing. I'm not much of a cusser, myself. I got out of the
habit while my son was growing up. But I think Rick was using his vocabulary
in a good cause. It certainly got results. And, I must say, it helped pass
the time which was going so slowly I thought once or twice my watch finally
had stopped. All the rest had quit long ago.

Our prayer service ended the 14th day, which was of
course the end of a fortnight adrift along the equator. This night we had
a new prayer to present to the Lord; a plea for wind to blow us out of the
doldrums. We were being held helpless in one spot while our strength
ebbed.

When the 15th morning dawned without wind, Bill Cherry
announced he was cutting loose in the hope the three rafts would spread out
and one of them would get into the wind and be blown toward help. He dropped
our

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line, but nothing happened. The rafts stayed together. Eventually
we tied up again.

It was that afternoon that Cherry had his bout with
a 10 foot shark  and lost the decision. The big fellow was nosing around,
at intervals scooting under our raft to scrape off his barnacles. Each time
the shark went under he smacked the bottom of the boat with his tail, jolting
Jimmy Reynolds, who lay there. Jimmy had been feeling very low.

Cherry started telling off that shark. He told him
what he thought of him individually, his relatives, his ancestors, and sharks
generally. When he had tired himself out, he dropped into a doze on the gunwale
of the raft. Suddenly there was a terrific jolt and a roar of
pain.

"My nose is broken!" Cherry yelled.

I looked around and was inclined to agree with him.
The insulted shark had let go a mighty wallop with his tail, catching Cherry
squarely in the face and knocking him into the bottom of the boat on top
of Reynolds. Blood was gushing from Bill's nose. I thought we would never
get it stopped. A month later it still was sore and he was afraid a cartilage
had been broken.

I will say to the reader now just what I told Bill
Cherry then. If you have something insulting to say to a 10 foot shark, wait
until you are safely back in San Francisco, then write him a
letter.

There is no entry in my diary for the 16th day adrift
and only one for the 17th. This reads:

"Still in doldrums. Water low. Hopes low."

Every now and then someone would go out of his head
and yell crazily. But this wasn't novel any more. Rick never lost confidence
that we would be saved and I don't think I did. Hope was low, but I never
told myself this was the end.

It was during this period that I thought I met
Davy

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Jones, the mythical keeper of lost sailor's souls. I am told it
is unusual for a man to remember the creatures of his delirium. I know only
this: That the things I relate now are more vivid in my mind than many that
actually happened, even though these were delusions of a mind set off kilter
by thirst, hunger, and suffering.

On one of those nights  it could have been either
the 16th or the 17th  it seemed I heard a voice:

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"This is Davy Jones, Jim. Come on down; down to my
locker. I want to see you."

I remember thinking I had nothing to lose. So, it
seemed in my delirium, I slid over the side of the raft, being careful Rick
didn't see me go, and slipped down and down through the warm water. On the
bottom I came face to face with Davy, a powerfully built man with a white
mustache that curled down over the corners of his mouth. With him was his
assistant, Jim Blood.

"Are you ready to come down here for good?" Davy
asked.

I told him no. Jim Blood then began talking to me.
I liked Jim better than Davy. He wasn't so austere. He was powerfully built
also, but clean shaven. He was suave and genial and treated me about like
the sales manager of an aircraft corporation would treat his best
customer.

"Jim, we're all ready for you down here," Blood told
me. "You'd better stay. You don't belong on land. You belong with us. You're
a sailor and all sailors should stay here. (I had been in the Navy from 1919
to 1922.) How about it?"

I thanked Jim, but I told him I wasn't ready yet;
that I had things to do back in San Francisco and elsewhere. Jim laughed
and said I'd be welcome any time.

In my delirious fancy I went back to the raft. Voices
would call "Hello" to me across the stern. I answered invariably and asked
their names. These they always gave me.

I called several times for Jim Blood to come up to
the raft and talk. He never failed me. Each time, though, he wanted to know
if I was ready to go back with him to Davy Jones' locker. I like that
fellow.

On the 17th night, I think it was, it seemed to me
that the raft was an open automobile and that we were traveling down a lane
with night clubs and roadhouses on either side.

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There was one handsome club at which I had thought
we would stop. When we didn't I turned petulantly to Cherry, who I believed
was driving that car. I said sharply:

"Bill, why didn't you stop at that big roadhouse with
the neon signs?"

"There's a better one a little farther on, Jim," he
said soothingly. Here Jimmy Reynolds joined the conversation.

"He wouldn't have dared stop on that island anyway,
Jim," he said. I don't know whether I should tell you fellows or not, but
they are drilling secretly for oil there. I saw the big condensers they set
to get water from the sea."

"What's that? What's that?" This was Rickenbacker
yelling from the other raft?"

"The oil is a secret." Jimmy went on, "but I think
Bill Cherry knows all about it."

"He's nuts," Cherry commented. "He..."

"Just a minute, now," Rick interrupted. "Let's go
to the bottom of this. What island are you talking about? I want to know
all about this!"

Later, in Samoa, Rickenbacker and I had a good laugh
over it.

"I must have been balmy, too," he told me. "But I
wasn't overlooking any bets that concerned islands with water condensers
on them."